On 2020-09-26 14:04, nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

Tile. (Object locating device). Huge success.

not for long and they know it.

The context was crowd funding and Tile certainly was successful in
getting funding and deploying a good, functional product and remains (I
believe) the market leader.

If Apple's widget is iOS/PadOS/WatchOS only then Tile will retain a huge
market opportunity base.

Tile have had a good run with no issues and have grown their product
base. Personally I think it's an error to have a subscription service
on top of a relatively expensive widget. I almost bought some to attach
to my drones in case one went off the ranch. But my flying habits are
very conservative and RTH (testing) has proven very reliable - as long
as it's correctly configured.

Apple's deployment of whatever it'll be called will depend, as always,
on costs to the user. If the widget is relatively cheap and the
crowdsourcing is free, then it will surely takeoff. Limiting it to
iOS/iPad/WatchOS will limit it's market opportunities as noted above.

it also wasn't that effective, nor could it be.

I know people who have located several things in the direct mode - ie:
the tile brought them close enough to find the object by the noise it
makes when triggered. Not sure about the crowd sourced mode - but
there's no reason that should not work - at least in more urban areas.

--
"...there are many humorous things in this world; among them the white
man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages."
-Samuel Clemens